Child Lost
by Widdrim
Summary: Dooku knows his father left him to die in the woods. He didn't know about the man who saved his life. The mechanic knew droids, not laws, but whatever curse Gora thought the child would bring, that future would have to sort itself out. His choice was here. Now. Every second until the sun came up. Part 1 of the "Explain it All to the Watchman's Son" series


The saying goes:

"My tongue's become where the trampling oxen stand." You could ask the house. If this house had a mouth, this house would speak.

I mean my words just so.

They're dark to those in the dark: not to those in the know.

There's more, but I won't say it.

The mechanic picked his way down the narrow cliff path, one hand on the cool stone as he wound back and forth. His other hand supporting the babe zipped into his grease-stained overalls.

Serenno was cold at nice, this far north. A stiff wind gusted over the forest below and skimmed the cliff face. Not enough to knock the mechanic down, but enough to make him nervous on the twisting path. At least the full moon let him see most of the path, even if it left some spindly shadows and made the forest below look even more full of ghosts than usual . In the branches, he thought he saw a flash of white.

A rock slipped underfoot. He skidded, hit one knee. Pain bloomed where he'd hit a rock. The baby wailed and squirmed against his shirt.

"Oh hey, hey." He leaned against the cliff and unzipped his overalls to check his cargo. The baby wailed, but there weren't any scratches or cuts on the little bald head. "Oh, you're okay."

He wasn't sure the baby understood. He didn't know much about babies at all. Droids he knew. Some ships even. But nothing this small and this soft.

By rights, the mechanic shouldn't have been here at all. He had been repairing a cleaning droid, hunched over in the castle hallway where it had choked on a dust clod. He should have carried it down to the garage, but it had been a chipper little thing that insisted it would be a quick fix. So he'd squared down and dumped out his tools.

Then there had been shouting somewhere, bellowing like a bull gundark. Spooked, the mechanic had scrambled to scoop up the droid and all its parts. Then a door burst open and out rushed the countess, Anya Dooku looking like she'd seen the dead. She'd gone straight past him, like the mechanic and his droid and his wrenches weren't even there.

She'd had her second child less than a month ago, but the frightened look on her face hadn't had anything to do with that.

Then Count Gora had appeared after her. He'd taken up the whole doorway backlit like some specter. The mechanic froze while the cleaning droid trembled in his hands.

"You." The count jerked his chin. "Get in here."

Shaking, the mechanic obeyed.

Inside was a nursery. Spacious, pale purple. Chairs and art and shelves of books and toys. A baby wailing in the crib.

The count stabbed a finger at the crib beneath a slowly turning mobile of stars. It looked like it was turning by itself. "Take it to the forest and leave it there."

The mechanic didn't remember what he had said, only how his hands shook and how his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"That child will bring nothing but misery on this house and all its people."

"But he'll die."

"He's a curse. Say nothing of this to anyone."

The count hadn't needed a threat.

Now, kneeling on the cold path, the mechanic awkwardly patted the crying baby's back. "You're okay. Oh, look at that, you've already got your great-great-grandpa Serenno's nose. At least the one on that statue. Poor kid."

The baby didn't even open his eyes, but slowl , he calmed and got a fistful of the mechanic's shirt.

After a minute, the mechanic got back to his feet and kept going. His knee throbbed but didn't slow him down. Thank the ancestors he had his gloves, or his fingers might have frozen already. He shuffled his feet and kept one hand on the cold stone to keep from tumbling off the narrow path. The count might not care if the mechanic fell and broke his neck and the child's with him, but the mechanic did.

A long while later, he reached the bottom of the cliff. The detritus rustled and crunched underfoot as he crept towards the trees.

The forest was old, older than the castle atop the cliff and older than the family that ruled it. It ran for klicks and klicks until it hit the outskirts of the city, which was a . An endless sea of trees thick with summer leaves, and a ghost story for every one of them. Centuries of lost souls and dishonorable dead were said to haunt those woods.

The baby stirred against his chest, whimpering.

"Okay."

He crept to the edge of the trees where the gnarled trunks looked like hunched beasts in the moonlight. The wind cracked through the branches, and the shadows reached for him with long fingers. He had a light but maybe it was better not to see. Not to know what was waiting in those woods—a wild animal or a ghost or just exposure.

The baby whimpered against his chest.

The count had called the Jedi to collection his son, or so he said, but nobody knew how long that would take. Or if they would come at all.

The trees groaned, and he finally noticed the white flowers blooming in a clump at his feet. King's bane. It was supposed to grow where innocent blood hit the ground, and ancestors knew there was plenty of that in that castle's history.

And he was here to add more.

"Damn." The mechanic crouched where he stood, careful to stay in the moonlight, and unzipped his overalls.

The pink, wrinkly baby fussed against the man's chest, white shirt pinched in tiny fists.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." He laid a hand on the baby's head, and it fit easily in his palm. "I can't take you back. The count'll have my head. I'm a good mechanic. Worked for your house since I was a child. I didn't ask for this." The mechanic eased the baby out of his overalls and laid him carefully on the ground. As the cold dirt touched him, the baby screamed.

"It's okay. It's okay. I know." The mechanic stripped out of his undershirt as quick as he could, swaddled the baby in it, and laid him in a dip in the ground to protect him from the wind. That reduced the baby's screams to crying. Still crouched, the mechanic zipped up his overalls again and ran his hands over his head. "It's okay, little—Kriff, you don't even have a name. Your ancestors would never find you if… well. I hope whoever is coming to get you gives you one."

They sat like that for a long time, and the mechanic moved to sit cross-legged on the ground, blocking most of the wind. He needed to leave. He needed to walk back up that cliff path and not look back. Stick his fingers in his ears and walk away.

But if he left, the nameless baby wold be dead in an hour. That was blood on his hands and more blood on the house he served. His ancestors would haunt him to an early death bed, and there wouldn't be any white flowers for him. The Jedi might forgive, but Serenno did not.

The mechanic rubbed his legs nervously and wished he'd brought something to tinker with. Instead he started talking, just to distract himself from every shadow shifting in the forest.

"You see those?" He pointed up at the stars. Pale and distant with the bright moon, they were a smear of lights. "Those are all different planets. Stars, suns. That's Yavin, and that's Mandalore. And that tiny one there is Coruscant. That's where you're going. I've never been off this planet, but I bet you're gonna see a lot of them as a Jedi. I don't think there's been a Jedi from Serenno is a thousand years!"

The baby didn't look impressed.

"I think the last one was your great great great grandpa. Old man Serenno had visions of us being free so he came home and chased off the sith empire. But then I guess the visions went wrong." He looked down at all the white flowers and thought about what must have happened to make them grow so thick here. "That's why they're scared of you. Think you might have his curse. And maybe you do. Maybe you would've had dreams that destroyed the whole planet. But that's not your fault. Not now. There was something rotten in that house a long time before you got here."

A long sigh of wind rustled the trees, and the mechanic glanced up at the trees half expecting the eye-shine of a spine wolf. Only the endless dark trees looked back, but his heart leapt into his throat anyway, every hair on end. He wanted to run, to flee back to the cliff. Shuddering, he put his own head in his hands. Don't talk to ghosts, don't look at them, and they couldn't tempt him away and lead him into a gorge or a wolves den.

He could just go home. The count would never tell, and the mechanic could go back to his work. Nobody would ever know. He knew droids and circuits and wires. He didn't know about laws or counts or Jedi. He tinkered for a living, damn it. But he knew when a thing wasn't right. Whatever curse Gora thought the child would bring, that future would have to sort itself out. This was his choice. Here. Now. Every second until the sun came.

The baby mewed pitifully.

"Hey, don't cry." The mechanic extended one finger, and the baby seized it in a tiny red fist that warm and surprisingly strong. The mechanic smiled, and the galaxy shifted ever so slightly on its axis. "There you go. Not so scary, are you?"

And the two of them sat on the edge of the forest for the next few hours, waiting for the sun or an appearance of... something. Someone. The baby didn't cry again. And the mechanic didn't notice the figure in white, faintly glowing deep in the trees as she watched him. The baby stared, curious, but the mechanic had his head in his arms and didn't see. He didn't notice the wolves giving the area a wide, silent berth either.

In the grey hour before dawn, the mechanic stirred from a half-sleep to the sound of an approaching speeder. Finally. He scrambled for the cover of the boulders at the base of the cliff. Breathing hard, he crouched as small as he could make himself. He hadn't lasted in the woods all night to get caught by a Jedi.

A speeder whizzed along the edge of the forest, coming to a stop outside not far from where the mechanic hid.

A Twi'lek woman in brown robes hopped off the speeder, and something silver flashed at her hip. She was moved quickly, like she was barely touching the ground. Maybe she was a kind of ghost too. Not noticing him, or ignoring him, the Twi'lek glided to where the baby lay squirming and screaming on the ground. The speeder noise must have scared him awake. She picked the wailing baby off the ground and whispered softly to him, and he stilled quickly in her arms.

"This was barbaric." Her white teeth flashed, and they were sharp like wolf fangs. Then she softened again and inspected the shirt tucked around her new charge. "The Force must have been watching over you, little Dooku. Come. Let's get you to your new home."

Then she tucked the child under her cloak close to her heart, and the two of them left on the speeder.

Shaking with cold and exhaustion and relief, the mechanic crept back up the cliff to his small living quarters in the castle's underbelly . He collapsed in his bed as the moon dipped below the horizon. The next week he stayed home with a raging fever. When his fellow workers pressed him about the night he'd disappeared, he said nothing.

The count and countess told their people and their eldest son Ramil that the newborn had to be sent away. No explanation, but everyone knew better than to ask for one. The castle staff mourned for a day, whispered among themselves about why their lord's son had vanished. None of them guessed close. They knew guessing rightly would bring more trouble than it was worth.

The mechanic kept his story to himself, and the nameless child was never spoken of or seen again in that castle on the cliff.


End file.
